Scholar Sidekick - Agent Skills

Portable Agent Skills that teach AI agents to use Scholar Sidekick - a fast, deterministic citation resolver, formatter, exporter, and citation verifier.

Paste any scholarly identifier (DOI, PMID, PMCID, ISBN, ISSN, arXiv ID, ADS bibcode, or a WHO IRIS URL) and get a clean citation in 10,000+ CSL styles, a bibliography file (BibTeX, RIS, EndNote, CSL-JSON, CSV...), a retraction check (Crossref + Retraction Watch), an open-access check (Unpaywall), or a fabrication check that catches the real-DOI-plus-invented-title pattern (Topaz et al., Lancet 2026) that plain DOI resolution misses.

Skills in this repo

Skill	Path	Use when
scholar-sidekick-api	skills/scholar-sidekick-api	Zero-install. The agent can run curl/HTTP. No API key, no setup — calls the public REST API directly. Start here.
scholar-sidekick-cli	skills/scholar-sidekick-cli	The agent has Node ≥20 and prefers typed subcommands (scholar format …), batch input, streaming, and > file redirection over hand-built curl payloads. Ships on npm as scholar-sidekick-cli.
scholar-sidekick-mcp	skills/scholar-sidekick-mcp	The host has the scholar-sidekick-mcp MCP server connected (works anonymously — no key required; optional SCHOLAR_API_KEY/RAPIDAPI_KEY raise limits). Native tool calls instead of curl.

All three expose the same capabilities; pick the one that matches how your agent is wired.

Install

These skills follow the open SKILL.md convention, so they install in any compatible agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenClaw, and more):

# list what's in the repo
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills --list

# add everything in the repo (all three skills)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills

Or install one skill by its explicit skills/<name> path:

# zero-install REST skill (start here)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-api

# CLI skill (agent has Node ≥20; uses the `scholar` command)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-cli

# MCP skill (host has the scholar-sidekick-mcp server connected)
npx -y skills@latest add mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills/skills/scholar-sidekick-mcp

Browse the rendered docs: scholar-sidekick-api · scholar-sidekick-cli · scholar-sidekick-mcp on skills.sh.

Quick taste (no install)

curl -sS -X POST "https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/format" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text":"10.1038/nphys1170","style":"apa","output":"text"}'

Discovery surfaces (built for agents)

• API contract: https://scholar-sidekick.com/llms.txt · https://scholar-sidekick.com/AGENTS.md
• OpenAPI 3.1: https://scholar-sidekick.com/openapi/openapi.yml
• Agent Skills discovery index: https://scholar-sidekick.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json
• MCP server: https://github.com/mlava/scholar-sidekick-mcp · npx -y scholar-sidekick-mcp@latest
• Data sources & determinism: https://scholar-sidekick.com/.well-known/sources.json
• Browse on skills.sh: https://www.skills.sh/mlava/scholar-sidekick-skills

Not a paper-search tool

These skills assume you already have an identifier. To find papers by topic, pair with a literature-discovery tool (e.g. an arxiv, Semantic Scholar, or OpenAlex skill). Scholar Sidekick handles the cite / export / verify layer once you have the ID.

License

MIT © Scholar Sidekick.